UFC 194 as Good as it Gets for Fight Fans

This Saturday December 12th the UFC will have
their closest thing to a Super fight in the stellar matchup between Conor
McGregor and Jose Aldo at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. This fight should set all
kinds of UFC pay per view records as fight fans have awaited this matchup for a
long time. And frankly now that college football has winded down, there isn`t a
lot of sports competing for these sports dollars over the weekend.

This better be a great fight, and not a total dud because
the UFC is running a little thin on credibility after their foray into women`s
mixed martial arts with the hype machine that was Ronda Rousey. As she became
just the latest example of the UFC Promotion machine getting a little ahead of
its fighter`s capabilities and experience level.

This is part of the problem that the UFC faces is that in
order to truly have a high level of mixed martial arts fighting skills it takes
at least 10 years of training, even for a talented athlete to reach the mastery
level. There just aren`t that many people who will be able to subsidize their
living standard for at least ten years that it takes to gain this type of
advanced fighting skillset.

For example, professional football has junior high, high
school, and college training programs doing all the prep work training, and
then they weed out the best, and have plenty of qualified candidates to choose
from to run their business model. The same for basketball, baseball and even
soccer. Because these sports are supported and developed in the education curriculum
as part of a well-rounded educational program, there are lots of potential
employees being developed by the professional sports leagues at no cost.

Developmental Programs

The UFC has had to rely on college wrestling programs, private
Jiu Jitsu gyms, and some Karate clubs for their ‘subsidized’ athlete pool. And
hope like heck they can get enough of these individuals to master some boxing,
and the other disciples of the mixed martial arts game. But the UFC runs into a
sheer numbers issue, as most of the other sports developmental programs not
only take athletes away from these much smaller niche hobby sports endeavors
for the youth. But also the UFC has such a small athlete pool to begin with,
that once in any athletic sport where the majority are weeded out who just
aren`t athletic enough, or have the mental makeup, persistence level and
dedication to develop high level skills required to reach an elite level of
performance. The UFC is basically left with a very limited number of fighters
who are worth spending money on, and make for compelling “must-see” entertainment.
And usually the capable interesting fighters are not in the same weight class because
there are just so few to begin with here with this supply chain model.

The UFC has known about this problem, and they anticipated
with the ‘mainstreaming’ of the sport in getting a national television contract
with Fox, and getting more sponsorship from corporate advertisers that the
fighters would come up through the ranks. But this is where the miscalculation came
in by the UFC. It takes at least 10 years to actually master multiple martial
arts disciplines, and there just aren`t that many candidates who will sacrifice
10 years of making no money for a sport where they routinely get hit in the
face or have some malodourous person lay on them on top of a dirty mat for 2
hours a day. In high School you at least get a nice letter jacket that
impresses the ladies for your ineffectual efforts at playing football, baseball
and basketball.

The UFC is left with the occasional college wrestler who can
learn how to box at a novice level, an Olympic Judo competitor who can learn
some basic wrestling and kick-boxing moves, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu students who
can learn some boxing and wrestling skills. But even these fighters are not
complete mixed martial arts fighters but rather have one good skill set, and
the other skill sets necessary for legitimate mixed martial art`s fighting are
at the novice to intermediate level at best.

5 Fighters at Master`s Skill Level

As a result the UFC has basically had about 5 guys who could
actually fight as a true mixed martial artist and were talented athletes at a commensurate
professional advanced level on their fighting roster at any given time. This
makes it hard to put actual high level watchable shows on pay per view multiple
times a year, let alone several times a month like the UFC tries to do without completely
alienating your fans with subpar shows of overhyped events that are basically watered
down fighting club events.

Whenever you have fighters with less than 3 fights fighting
on main events like Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, and over the hill boxers like
James Toney you know there is a talent issue in the sport. Can you imagine
putting in a quarterback to read modern NFL defensive coverages with such
little preparation and years of experience? The UFC has basically devolved into
the modern day equivalent of the Ringling Brother`s circus show promoting the
latest freak show in the ring. We will see if Conor McGregor can actually fight
this Saturday, and the Aldo – McGregor fight ends up meeting considerable
expectations by fans.

Reinvest Profits in the Business –
Like Amazon

However, until the UFC finds a way to reinvest their profits
in developing fighters for the future, in some sort of amateur training program
they are going to continue to tread water as an organization competing for the
sports entertainment dollar. Maybe work with high school sports programs to
have basic mixed martial arts clubs as alternatives for youths in lieu of
football, basketball, baseball, track, golf, swimming, gymnastics, tennis and
soccer. Or alternatively provide yearly stipends to have fighters on the roster
in a developmental program like the minor leagues in baseball.

Legitimate Sport or Professional
Wrestling?

Alternatively, they can hope that the fight fans will
continue to purchase expensive pay per view events for overhyped fighters who
lack the requisite training and skillset of the other sports leagues. Can you
imagine if Tom Brady had only 10 starts in his entire football training life
before playing in the Super bowl? The UFC is basically a flawed product right now,
which relies upon hype, and an incompetent uncritical sports media accomplice in
promoting underqualified participants as professionally qualified athletes with
advanced mixed martial arts skillsets. In the glory days of boxing, which is
the most common comparison sport, fighters had 5-10 years of amateur boxing
training, at least 20 professional fights gradually building up there skillset,
and then they worked their way into title fight contention.

The UFC for the most part is one giant hype machine,
promoting overhyped fights with fighters who are inadequately prepared, often
not even meeting the 10,000 hours threshold of mixed martial arts training, let
alone actually being gifted to any high degree in the sport. In the past,
athletes tried to compensate for lack of skill by taking performance enhancing
drugs (steroids, Hgh, etc.), dropping 20 plus pounds of water weight right
before the fight (weight-cutting cans), and any other means available like
laying on an opponent for 15 minutes due to only being able to wrestle or having
a limited mixed martial arts toolkit.

We have written in the past about the progress of the sport,
but in going after the almighty dollar in the short term, the UFC has failed to
build a solid foundation going forward for its future. As of right now, despite
the best fight this Saturday in years, the product is reaching a stagnation
standpoint. It hasn`t evolved or taken near advantage of its opportunity as we
would have anticipated given the uptick of a national television contract with
Fox Sports, and the multitude of corporate sponsorships that have come the
UFC`s way the last 3 years.

In short, if the UFC was a stock we would be shorting it
right into the Aldo-McGregor spike this weekend. The UFC is going to have to
make some changes if they are going to take their sport to the next level;
promoting women fighters in bikinis can only fool the sports buying public for
so long. Unless they want to remain a freak show niche ‘sport’ like
professional wrestling with its declining pay per views, they better formulate
a plan to develop a roster of 100 fighters who are truly compelling to watch from
an overall athletic and advanced skill standpoint – a roster of fighters who are
actually competent well rounded Mixed Martial Artists.